You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. You know, as a kid, I hated being told to wait because you're not doing anything. Well, Jesus told the disciples to wait, the apostles to wait, and what did they do?
You mean they didn't just do nothing? Well, no. Let's read today in Acts and find out what they did do. We'll see it today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome.
This is More Than Ink, and I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. And we're sitting here at our dining room table, as we always are. And we have started into the book of Acts, which is going to be a rip-roaring good time and make a great movie. So last week we talked about how the book opens and what that conversation with Jesus was like, and they saw him lift off from the earth and go into heaven. And then there were two men who appeared to them saying, hey, don't just stand gazing into heaven because he's coming back the same way you saw him go.
I call it the grand exit. But in the grand exit, he promises he's coming back. He's coming back.
This is not as final as it looks. In fact, we still live under that promise to this very day, he's coming back. So yeah, we left them on the mountaintop there on the Mount of Olives, looking up into heaven, looking up in the clouds, seeing Jesus going away, being assured he will come back. And so we pick up the story today in chapter 1, verse 12 of what they did after he was pulled up into heaven.
Right. And so we pick up without a breath right after Jesus has been taken up into heaven. So we're starting in verse 12 of chapter 1 of Acts. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.
Okay, you want to say anything about that? How long is a Sabbath day's journey? Yeah, a Sabbath day is actually very short. Right. I mean, you can't go very far. You can't go so far that it feels like you're walking to work.
Yeah, I thought the steps were actually numbered. They are, they are. But if you know your geography in Jerusalem, just to the east of the temple area of Jerusalem, you have the Mount of Olives and there's just the Kidron Valley between it. So it's really, it's not a far walk at all. Right. That's a short walk. It was a short walk. Right. So Sabbath day's journey, a short walk.
Short walk. Verse 13. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying, which is interesting because we had seen the night before Jesus died them having the last supper together in an upper room. So possibly this is the same place. They've been hanging around in Jerusalem.
Could be, yeah. Although we know they took a trip up to Galilee and here they are back in Jerusalem. Okay. So they went up to the upper room where they were staying and how to have their names. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All of these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. Oh, we got to stop there. Yeah. So if you also recall in the first part of chapter one, Jesus said, you need to stick around here until the Holy Spirit comes. Right.
Until the Holy Spirit comes. So this is what they're doing. They're sticking around. They're in the upper room. They're praying together. They're all together and it's not just the 11 apostles. It's actually a large group of people.
Isn't that great? And look at the women, right? Those are probably the women who had been traveling with Jesus, as Luke has told us back in chapter eight of his gospel. There were lots of women who traveled with Jesus. And he gives us their names. Right.
So listeners, you can go back and look those up. I'm pretty sure it's at the beginning of Luke eight. So the women and then the women who probably witnessed the resurrection, right?
The ones who went first to the tomb. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have Mary the mother of Jesus called out as among those women and his brothers. Now that's amazing. Brothers plural. Yeah, that's amazing. And we get a list of his brother's names in another place, I think in Mark's gospel.
Yes. But what's fascinating to me is the fact in John seven, it says that not even his brothers believed in him. Right. At the time in the John seven account. And then in the Mark three account, there's a lot of chaos going on around Jesus.
And they say that he's out of his mind. Right. Right. So they're clearly not full in believers and followers of Jesus. But here after the resurrection, they're in.
They're in. Well, and Paul tells us in First Corinthians 15, that chapter that we read last week that James, his brother. James. He appeared especially to James, who may have been the oldest brother right after him. Right. And that James, the brother of Jesus, was a prominent leader in the church in Jerusalem.
In the Jerusalem church. As you'll see in Acts as it comes out. Yeah, within just a couple of chapters. Yeah. So that's a big deal. So this list is interesting because at the top of the list, Peter and John and James, we know James and John were brothers. And Peter's brother, Andrew. So we get the four of them right at the top of the list. Right. Right. And then the rest of them.
So it's kind of funny. So many times in the Gospels that it sounds like the only guys who ever spoke were those four at the top of the list. But they were other guys. But they were all here. They're named right here.
Yeah. It's such a great, it's a great picture of unity amongst them. It says they're with one accord and they're devoting themselves to prayer. And they're together.
And again, it's not segregated men and women. They're all together. Right. Okay. So that's revolutionary.
It is. In Jewish culture. Very revolutionary.
In the first century for men and women to be devoting themselves to prayer together. Yeah. Yeah. That's new. Yeah. So this is ongoing.
I might point out, too, it's another Captain Obvious thing. But they decided to obey to stay in Jerusalem. To stay in Jerusalem. So the first step here is obedience. And then they have fellowship together.
That's kind of step two. And they were all agreeing. And they were all agreeing in that fellowship. And then they were praying together. So this is a nice kind of archetype of what Christian churches should look like.
People who are intent on obeying and fellowshiping together in unity and praying together. Well, and they had some time to pass, right? Right.
Because Jesus said, stay here until this event happens. So they were all in agreement. How shall we best spend our time? Yeah. Well, let's pray together. Let's pray together. We agree. That's the most important thing we can be doing.
Yeah. So they're waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. That's obedience. But in the meantime, Peter has a thought about an issue they need to deal with. And so that's what he does in verse 15.
Okay. So picking it up in verse 15. In those days, so that tells us this was going on for some days.
Peter stood up among the brothers. Now, in parentheses, the company of persons was in all about 120. That's a big upper room. So it's not just the 11 remaining disciples and the women. There's a lot of people.
A lot. And we're going to find out in a minute that there were men, right? And I might mention too, since Paul said he appeared to 500 simultaneously once, it could very well be a lot of those 500 are still here. It's possible. Yeah. So anyway.
Okay. So Peter stands up among this group of 120. So verse 16. Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.
For he was numbered among us and allotted his share in this ministry. Now we get this little parenthetical statement. Yeah. Interesting. Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.
And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the field was called in their own language, Akkaldama, that is field of blood. Now, do we want to talk about that before we press on to what Peter actually said? No, let's stop there just for a second. Yeah.
Stop there just for a second. So he's standing up and saying, let me make, again, another obvious statement. You know, what happened to Judas wasn't accidental.
In fact, David himself had prophesied that what happened to Judas. So this is not an accident. And he was numbered amongst us, the number being 12. Right. And for some reason they have arrived at this conclusion, there got to be 12 of us.
There's got to be 12 of us, yeah. And so that just makes a whole lot of sense. And then he includes this thing, what happened to Judas, how did he, where is he now? Where is Judas now? Well, he died. Well, he committed suicide.
And there is a little, there's a conflict here between this passage, apparently, and the Matthew 27 passage. But many people have explained this a couple different ways. And I'll just propose one. Well, I'll propose two. Give us a couple.
I'll give you a couple, yeah. Yeah, so he hung himself. And when you hang yourself, you actually want to make sure that you follow good enough distance that it breaks your neck rather than strangles you slowly.
So you always go to a higher place, you tie a rope, and you jump off of something. Well, one explanation is the fact that he indeed did break his neck and was dead and hung there because you're not supposed to touch a dead thing. And with time, his body rotted and fell on the ground and when it fell on the ground, because it's at a height usually, then all his guts spilled out.
The other one was that it was just a really poor, it was a poor suicide. So that basically, he did the rope thing, hung himself, but it didn't hold and a limb broke. Right, and he fell on it. And then he fell on the ground because you got to go a distance in order to break your neck. And he fell on the ground, that killed him. And he would spill your guts on that.
So it could be one of those two things. Well, and the fact that Luke wrote this, we're going to talk later about the fact that Luke was a physician. So in Luke's Gospel, we get a lot of details, we get medical details in the healings of Jesus. And so this is something that would have been very interesting to him as a physician. And we know that he fell and his guts fell out.
And every time I read this, I think about the missionary Neil Anderson that we knew back in Spokane. And when he was translating the Bible to these people in New Guinea, he was kind of holding his breath when they got to this because someone was going to point out this is a conflict. But when he read it to them and pointed out the conflict, they all shrugged their shoulders. They understood it immediately.
They understand. There's not a conflict here. So he was just so surprised by that.
And we're kind of shaken when we see these. There's ways to explain these things and not call them actually a conflict error in the Bible. So all of that is this little parenthetical inclusion by Luke right smack in the middle of what Peter is saying. So you can actually go from the statement that Peter says, for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry in verse 17. And then jump to verse 20, for it's written in the book of Psalms, may his camp become desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it.
And let another take his office. So they seem to be convinced that there must be a 12th apostle. Yeah. And because they can appeal to scriptures, now they don't have the Holy Spirit yet. But this is healthy for them because they're wondering about this.
Aren't we supposed to be 12? Right. And do we know any passages of scripture? So Peter pulls it out of two disparate Psalms. Two different Psalms, yeah.
I think it's Psalm 69 and Psalm 109. And he puts those together and says, well this is clearly describing to us what we are actually witnessing right now. So in the second passage he says, let another take his office. So he says, there's the word, saying we need to fill his office.
We need to go from 11 to 12 again. So it's interesting to me because Psalm 69 is recognized as a messianic Psalm. Right.
But 109 not so much. No, it's not. So I don't understand why Peter would land on these verses except that it seemed to make sense. Yeah, yeah. And we'll come across this quite a bit in Acts where they quote out of the Old Testament and we'll scratch our heads and say, really?
Why, yeah. How would you use that? It's a good teaching moment for us because we can see how they interpret it. But here clearly Peter's not waiting for the Holy Spirit. He's saying, I have enough from the word and I respect him for that. He's looking at the word. He's thinking through the word to see if he can find in the word what's matching their experience and what they should do. And he says, well, here we go. Yeah, so that's interesting.
Maybe we'll circle back and talk about that a little more. Yeah. But, so Peter goes on. So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us, one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. Okay, so that tells us there weren't just the 12 traipsing around with Jesus. From the very beginning, Peter says, some of you guys in this room have been hanging around believing in Jesus from the very beginning, even though you weren't in the named inner circle. They could have been followers of John the Baptist, he says.
Right. And remember, some of the apostles came from following John the Baptist. So they said, this is just a very… Well, Andrew did, actually, as I recall.
Andrew did, yeah. So this is a very practical first step. They're saying, let's thin the field just a little bit. If someone's going to be a witness to who Jesus is, they have to have witnessed as much as we have. So all the way from John the Baptist to the resurrection. Okay, that's just, one of the commentators I read years ago calls this sanctified common sense. If you're going to be a witness, you have to have seen it all. You have to have seen the whole story.
Yeah, so they say, let's limit it. And they come up and all the people they think about, they're just two names. Just two names.
All the people who are in the room there. So, verse 23, and they put forward two. Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, you, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you've chosen to take the place in this ministry at apostleship, from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And then they do something very interesting, which is in the Old Testament pattern. Verse 26.
And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. Yeah. That makes us a little crazy when we read that. Well, it's just interesting.
But it is very consistent. It's consistent with the Old Testament. I mean, I looked up, Proverbs 16, 33 says, the lot is cast into the lap.
Now, we're thinking dice. Right. The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. Right. It's seen as a rational and predictable way for God to steer the direction of things.
And we see the casting of lots all the way through the Old Testament. Yes. In case of decision making or sorting out the people who should be in charge or all of those things. Yeah.
Or in finding out who's guilty. Right. They cast a lot. Yeah. But this is the last time they do it. Yeah.
That's right. Because when the Holy Spirit comes, that's an obsolete approach. They don't need to anymore.
But it's interesting that here we see this transition taking place. They pray, Lord, you know, you know the hearts of all, show us, show us. And then they cast the lot and assume that God will have directed the way it falls. Yeah. So this is not superstition right here.
No. They clearly are trusting God to supersede in this decision. And they're just going to use this means to do it. But they haven't lost their trust in God leading them. They're clear that God will lead them.
No. They're looking for a concrete indication because they don't yet know the leading of the Holy Spirit. Right. And they don't want to make a mistake.
Right. They don't want to make a mistake making an apostle who's not an apostle. So that's why even in their trust, in his prayer, he says, look, you know their hearts. You know the hearts of these two men in front of us. So since you know the hearts and we don't, we are trusting in you to point to us which one you want to put in the apostleship. And so here we go. You roll the dice. That's it.
It's Matthias. So they haven't lost their trust in God. A lot of people look at this and say, well they're not trusting in God anymore. I mean they're like throwing dice around.
It's just random. Right. Well that's just ignorance of the Old Testament pattern. That's exactly right.
Because they were just doing what they had been, what they understood to be a means of God's guidance. Yeah. And I'll maintain that. When you're trying to understand God's will for your life, your leadership, what you need to do is what they do here first which is, Lord, I'm relying on you to show me. I'm putting the burden on you to get the message across rather than having me trying to second guess what you want. I'm not going to second guess what you want but it's your responsibility to make it clear so I'll just take what you give me and that's clear. Well and you know sometimes we still do this today, modeling after Gideon who laid a fleece before the Lord and said, God, you know what you intend to do but I need something concrete because you know me. I need more.
Yeah. And God honors that request and gives him what he's asking for. And if we jump forward into the New Testament to Thomas after the resurrection saying, you know, you all got to see him and touch his wounds but I didn't and unless I see and put my hands in the nails I won't believe. He knows himself because I'm a concretist.
I need to touch it and see it the same way you did. Jesus does not rebuke him. He doesn't.
He says, okay, here I am. And God does not rebuke them here. Right, right. That's exactly right. But their hearts are intent on God's will, not their own.
Not their own. And they don't want to make a mistake. So in everything when it comes to discerning the will of God for you, put your trust in God and leave the responsibility for getting the message to you in his hands. He's a much better communicator than you are a second guesser. And he'll make it abundantly clear. And I've told people stories throughout my entire life where God made something abundantly clear and so I say to them, look, I know from personal experience that God is capable of making something extremely clear. He's better at telling you this stuff than you are trying to figure it out.
So you need to put your trust in him and he'll get the message to you and there won't be an error. But where, you know, this is gracious of the Lord that in these first few chapters of Acts, we're going to see them learning this. We're going to see the Lord tutoring them. Because sometimes he sends them an angel to speak to them. Sometimes he verbally addresses them. Sometimes they bow in prayer until something happens. You know, it's like God is teaching them, I am capable of guiding you through my spirit in a number of ways. Yeah, as well as, like they started here, looking in his word, making connections to his word. So clearly we have guys who are being tutored by God about how to start reading the word, very rational way, putting it together through circumstances, leaning on the Holy Spirit to give you understanding, and then fully trusting in God being able to get you where you need to be without error. Because he's very good at that. Lord, show us which one you have chosen.
Because these are the guys. It makes me think too, there was a case where Paul, when we get into Paul's life, where he tries to go to a certain region in northern Turkey. As I set that direction, that's where he's gonna go, and then when you read his account here in Acts, Paul says, well that's where I was gonna go, but the Spirit kept me from going there.
And he doesn't tell us more specifics than that. So you can have great intentions, and there's nothing wrong with those great intentions, but God is faultless. God is without error when it comes to getting you to where he wants you to be. Well, and in another place in Acts, I don't think this is the same thing you were just referring to, when Paul has literally stopped going the direction he wants to go. He cannot go. And that night he has a dream.
That's the one I'm talking about. And he sees a man from Macedonia saying, come over and help us. And if I'm not mistaken, in his trip from there to Macedonia, he's gotta get in a boat in Troyes, and that's where Luke starts saying, we. So we find that maybe Luke lived in Troyes because of that turn.
I mean, it's a very significant turn as well. So the point of all this is that God is a trustworthy communicator. Right, right. He is able to put things in terms that you will understand.
Yes, yes. And you just have to put your trust in him. We always go down this road where we say to ourselves, well, okay, I think that's what God's telling me, but I sure would like to be sure.
I sure would like to test it somehow. I'd sure like to have a great confidence. Well, our confidence isn't in the testability of the message. Our confidence is in the character of God. Right. And so when you cry out to him and say, I want your will to be done, it will be done.
Right. So the chief impediment to understanding the will of God is your own will. And so once you put that down, God very clearly can get you where he wants you to be. Well, and the Lord Jesus modeled that for himself.
Yeah. Right there in those moments in the garden when he said, Father, not my will, but yours be done. And I think when you get over that threshold, God says, God rubs his hands together and says, okay, now we can work with this because it's not your willful stuff. Can we talk about one kind of bizarre thing here at the end?
And this is something that doesn't have a great answer, but it's a wonderful mystery to ponder. Bring it on. Didn't Paul call himself an apostle? Yeah, I was wondering if you were going to bring that up. And wouldn't that make 13 apostles rather than 12?
I mean, does it have to be 12? Well, when you look at Revelation 21, Revelation 21, and the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. Right.
Is Paul's name going to be there or not? That's an interesting question. And so a lot of people look at this and scratch their heads and say, maybe they made a mistake here with the rolling of the dice.
No, you can't say that's true. But how do you explain this? And there's a lot of ways to noodle about this, but it's a fascinating issue about all of this because Paul calls himself an apostle kind of late born. And he understood himself to be an apostle and untimely born. Right.
I was just my timeline did not line up with the rest of them. Right. And he clearly was a sent out one, which is an apostle. That's right. Okay.
So that's just, that's the fun thing to noodle about, about all this is what's that all about? And then there's, there's the possibility as well that the word apostle could mean basically your role, not necessarily your office. Right. So, so how does that apply here?
Well, I'm not sure this is where the debate goes, but it's kind of interesting. We've got 13 here. We don't have 12. Oh, well, I was going to say, you know, the word apostle does show up in other ways. It does. Jesus is called the apostle. Yes. Yes.
Of our faith in Hebrews. So, you know, apostle capital A as an office. Yes. Was these 12 guys. Right. Right. Well, small a, sent ones, the people who are actually called to go, really applies to all of us.
To all of us. Yeah. So there is that distinction, just like we made the distinction before about baptism, capital B, little b. Baptism just could mean generically placed into something bigger than you. So it could be that same thing. Another interesting thing, if you want to tie this together, is when you, when you count the tribes of Israel, right, well, there's, there's 12 of them, right? Yeah.
And if you look at the land, Joseph is split into two pieces of land. Right. In a sense, it looks like 13.
Right. Is this like a baker's dozen thing going on here? So that's, and I mean, we can explain that, but it's, it's a fascinating thing that we have that same kind of little mystery about 12 and 13 in terms of what looked like physical tribes and 12 and 13 when it comes to the apostles. So which one is it?
I don't know, but it's awfully fun to scratch your head and say, well, I'm not sure, but this is a fascinating thing. And there's nothing in this when Luke writes this that appears to him as being a problem. No, nothing here indicates that Matthias was not a valid choice. Right, right.
So even though Paul says, yes, I am like an apostle, one untimely born, he recognizes his role and he did have a face-to-face encounter with Jesus after the resurrection of his own independent from the others. Right, right. But I don't know, we don't have an easy answer for that. We don't have an easy answer. And I think that's one of the, one of the most fascinating things about reading these accounts is something will occur to you as like, well, isn't that a conflict? Like how did, how did, how did Judas die?
Isn't that a conflict? This is a way in which God sort of pushes us to say, you need to dig deeper. You need to think about this.
You need to come to me. These, these are not just really simple narratives. There's things going on that'll make you scratch your head in a really good kind of way. And that's why Acts is a wonderful narrative to read for that very purpose.
It is. And shortly as the story in Acts develops, we're going to see other people coming to prominence as sent ones who were not part of this original 12. You know, exactly. In fact, very soon there's, there's going to be a guy who goes up and does a magnificent amount of, of reaching out with the gospel into Samaria and, and his name's Philip. Right. And this is not an apostle. Well, there is an apostle named Philip.
But they're two different guys. So that's good that you would scratch your head when you first see that and say, wait a second until you read a little bit more. So yeah, so there's a whole bunch of wonderful little mysteries to untangle in all of this.
So I hope you're getting excited about investigating these as we are, because it really is. It's a stunning narrative about how God with his spirit poured out on ordinary people. We're talking like fishermen, okay. On ordinary people, the world turns upside down, just upside down. And after several decades, the world is changed completely. And because of Jesus' three years of public ministry, yeah. But because of the Holy Spirit indwelling ordinary people, telling their story and witnessing to what they've seen and heard about who Jesus really is.
It's fascinating. So as we pause then, before we're going on to the next chapter next week, we have the full number of 12 again. We're back to 12. We've got a full group. We're ready.
So we're ready for the Holy Spirit and that's what we're still waiting for. Maybe he'll come next time? Hmm. Maybe.
We'll find out. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And that's what happens because I'm waiting for it. Me too. We'll see you next time on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. That's pretty good. Good enough. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
